4mo ago

Texas SCOPE act takes effect Sunday. How does Lemmy comply?

www.click2houston.com What is the SCOPE Act? New law expected to take effect Sunday aims to add extra layer of protection to kids online

The new SCOPE Act takes effect this Sunday, adding protections for kids online through age verification and stricter marketplace regulations but one non-profit is challenging it. Will a judge block it? #OnlineSafety #ConsumerProtection #SCOPEAct

"The SCOPE Act takes effect this Sunday, Sept. 1, and will require everyone to verify their age for social media."

So how does this work with Lemmy? Is anyone in Texas just banned, is there some sort of third party ID service lined up...for every instance, lol.

But seriously, how does Lemmy (or the fediverse as a whole) comply? Is there some way it just doesn't need to?

153 comments

Why should it affect LW or any other (non-Texan) instance? Any rogue country with populists at the head can implement any arbitrary legislation. That does not affect Lemmy instances hosted in countries with reasonable governments. If Texas wants to enforce their rules (or punish for non-compliance), it is on them to approach instance admins or block the site in their corner of the global internet.
- This is a fair view. I'm not sure anyone has gotten that far, especially outside the country.
  Heres an article about a similar bill in Utah, that hasn't gone into effect yet.
  What's not clear from the Utah bill and others is how the states plan to enforce the new regulations.
  I mean if the general consensus is that it doesn't apply, then, cool.
  
  I live in Texas, and can confidently tell you the people writing these laws have no fundamental concept of what the internet is or how to implement or enforce such a law for consistent adherence.
  I can also tell you with confidence this law will be wielded with impunity against specific companies/sites our corrupt, petulant AG decides to go after. Fuck Ken Paxton.
  As far as users in Texas, this is nothing a VPN can't fix.
- I can absolutely see Texas looking at it the other way. "Your website can be accessed by our citizens? On you to comply with our laws." They then spit out a bunch of criminal charges that make things rather inconvenient for some instance hosts. The US reach into international banking systems is uncomfortably long.
  The real problem question is about federation. You can post to an instance from any federated instance. If an account is created in one instance and the user posts to a federated instance are both liable? You have to be able to create accounts AND post to be subject to the law. Can one instance not allow posts but host accounts for participation in other instances to skirt around the law?
  
  That would require jurisdiction to charge them anyways. They do not have such power.
  
  isn't this exactly what happened with porn sites?
  
  Interstate commerce is not under the jurisdiction of any state, it's under the jurisdiction of the federal government. They'd need a federal bill passed.
- Look where it's hosted? Sorry, but this approach has been outdated for decades. Laws apply when you address the users inside that legislation. No matter where you are, where your server is, etc.
  
  Do you have examples of that? From what I've seen the laws only apply if a business has a physical presence in that state or country.
- Is there any Lemmy hosted in the US? Texas can put on a stunt against any US instance, but don’t see them even trying for anything from the rest of the world. Too much work/money with too little chance of success.
  
  And the state I’m in would tell them to fuck right off and would probably allow me to counter sue Texas into the ground for harassment. I don’t think Texas wants to mess with states that have massive GDPs and contribute lots of money to the federal government.

As someone neither living nor hosting my instance in Texas I'll basically ignore it, and if it came to it I'd block the entirety of Texas if they somehow convince courts to enforce this outside of Texas.

Lemmy isn’t social media. Ignoring that though, the law actually says:
According to the Texas Office of the Attorney General, this new law will primarily “apply to digital services that provide an online platform for social interaction between users that: (1) allow users to create a public or semi-public profile to use the service, and (2) allow users to create or post content that can be viewed by other users of the service. This includes digital services such as message boards, chat rooms, video channels, or a main feed that presents users content created and posted by other users.”
Which literally applies to every single site on the entire planet that has a comment section. This law is incredibly unenforceable.
- Lemmy is absolutely social media.
  
  Nuh uh! I'm a Sovereign Netizen and I'm not driving social engagement, I'm just a traveler on the information superhighway!
  
  They said its not but, I think the argument they were trying to make was that it's not enforceable.
  
  It’s absolutely not. It has none of the hallmarks of social media (personal relationship, feed of user activity, likes and shares). It’s a forum. Forums existed for decades before social media. If you define forums as social media then you are defining every comment section on every site, including news sites, help sites, things like stack overflow even, as social media which is clearly ridiculous and so broad as to be a useless definition.
- Yep. This is another dumbass politicians trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist with a solution that doesn't work.
  
  It's not about solving a problem, it's about exerting control.
- Lemmy isn’t social media.
  What in the heck is it then?
  
  It's a social news aggregator. I assume the difference is, that this is to follow mainly news, whereas social media is to mainly follow people. In my 10 years of reddit and now Lemmy I never followed any account, I was just there for the niche topics and news aggregation.
  
  Its a webforum.
  Webforums are not social media.
  
  A forum?? Which have existed for literal decades before social media was a thing? If you define literally anything social as social media then you’re defining the entire internet as social media which is just a useless definition.
  https://programming.dev/comment/12069336
- It probably boils down to the definition of "user" vs. owner/admin/host ... But I wouldn't be surprised if those definitions were unclear or missing entirely.

The answer? Block Texas
Not joking. If suddenly hundreds or thousands of sites would become unavailable. It wouldn't last a week
- doesnt that happen every time it rains in texas?
- That didn't work with porn, so it's not a good idea for less popular websites.
  
  Honestly only a couple of the big porn sites, of it hit more big things it'd cause more uproar, imagine if Facebook went down for a day
- Why would anyone mess with texas at this point?
  
  Cause it's funny
  
  Why would we not? Why would we listen to a damn thing they have to say?

The same way lemmy works with GPDR. Lemmy completely ignores it.
- That's the vibe I'm getting. No problem.
  
  At times like this I wish we had /c/LegalAdvice - would love for someone who says "IAAL" to chime in.
  Some of the biggest lemmy instances - lemmy.world, feddit.de - are based in the EU. I don't understand how EU based instances like these would be able to get away with not following GDPR.
  Though, it may be more that GDPR doesn't apply, as per https://decoded.legal/blog/2022/11/notes-on-operating-fediverse-services-mastodon-pleroma-etc-from-an-english-law-point-of-view/
  [The UK GDPR] does not apply to … the processing of personal data by an individual in the course of a purely personal or household activity
  But for those spinning up an instance of a fediverse service for them and their friends, for a hobby, I think there’s far more scope for argument.
  In any case it seems like asking a fediverse instance to be compliant with the GDPR is possible, see for an example at https://sciences.re/ropa/ and https://mastodon.social/@robin/109331826373808946 for a discussion.
  
  It is a problem. If anyone complains or sues about GDPR compliance, they will get fined and/or have to pay damages.
  There's also other regulations, like the DSA. I'm fairly sure the GDPR isn't the only legal problem.
  
  It's going to be a big problem when the EU catches wind. Gpdr is a nasty law, hard to comply with properly, and has harsh fines. And no, "we tried to comply" will not fly
- It doesn't exactly ignore it, but in a sense GDPR doesn't apply to Lemmy.
  Long story short, GDPR is made to protect private information, and EVERYTHING in Lemmy is public so there is no private information to protect. It's similar to things like pastebin or even public feed in Facebook, companies cannot be penalized for people willingly exposing their information publicly, but private information that is made public is a problem.
  
  That is entirely incorrect. It is general data protection regulation, not privacy regulation.
  You are given certain rights over data relating to you. For example: you may have it deleted. Have you googled the name of a person? At the bottom, you will find a notice that "some results may have been removed". Under the GDPR, you can make search engines delete links relating to you; for example, links to unflattering news stories (once you are out of the public eye).

I'm so glad I don't live in that shithole state.

This has "DMCA notice to a Russian music site" vibes. Basically, we do nothing. They have absolutely zero authority outside of Texas. If the instance is inside Texas's borders, that's a different story, but if the instance is located outside, it has no obligation to follow Texas's law. They can't do anything. They can't block Lemmy, because it's federated. They can't sue Lemmy, because it's federated. They have zero recourse, except for slam their feet on the ground and cry like a petulant child.
- I'm curious to why can't they do anything to Lemmy because it's federated.
  Can they just block all the domain names of lemmy through ISP?
  As for suing, can they just go after the server owners or the hosting service?
  
  Good luck finding "all the domain names". IDK about suing, but unlike centralised monoliths like Facebook, you'd have to sue every instance violating your rules separately, and that's assuming you can pin down who and where to sue for each of them.
  
  They can't sue, but they could legislate that ISPs have to block lemmy instance domains. That would require Texas legislators to understand Lemmy though, which will never happen.
- Which to them is a normal adult behavior

They can SCOPE deez nuts.
- That's right, get noSCOPEd

I'm tired of Texas trying to expand their sphere of influence beyond their borders with shitty laws and shitty judges.
- Texas wants what the EU and California have so bad.
  
  Just financially.

So much freedom that it hurts.

It’s called the “Fuck Texas” response to such a garbage law. And good luck enforcing it especially with federated sites.

If you don't operate in Texas, do you have you comply? Is the easy fix is don't have your servers be in Texas?
- Someone can correct me if im wrong, but, pretty sure its any social media. Similar to what happened with pornhub.
  According to the Texas Office of the Attorney General, this new law will primarily “apply to digital services that provide an online platform for social interaction between users that: (1) allow users to create a public or semi-public profile to use the service, and (2) allow users to create or post content that can be viewed by other users of the service. This includes digital services such as message boards, chat rooms, video channels, or a main feed that presents users content created and posted by other users.”
  
  I mean my question was addressing the scope of the jurisdiction Texas can have over a server in another state. It feels like the onus is on them (or the ISPs in Texas) to block that server
  
  Fuck 'em. They want to do this, let Facebook, and Reddit, and Instagram, and TikTok and the fediverse, and any others that I'm forgetting refuse to serve connections to Texas.
  Make Texas the ONE PLACE where the internet is just yahoo and thehampsterdance.com
  And then when Texans go elsewhere, they realize all they did was punish themselves. The rest of the world moves on without them.
  
  (1) allow users to create a public or semi-public profile to use the service
  So it seems like I'm safe. I run my own single-user instance to federate and post - but I don't allow others to sign up at all, so they can't create a public or "semi-public" profile here (and what does semi-public mean?)
- If you own an instance it's better to check with a lawyer. They might give you a warning first or they might go after you immediately. How effective that is depends on what country you live in and which country the server is in.
- My guess is that the law is basically extra-territorial - meaning that in theory it applies no matter where you are based.
  For a for-profit service this is more enforceable - just gotta find a way to seize the stream of money flowing out of Texas for violate of the law.
  For a service based in the US this is more enforceable - just gotta get the federal system and other states to cooperate, and enforce Texas's court judgement, and then Texas can find a way to seize the stream of money flowing around and out of the US (or perhaps seize the US assets of the company).
  For a non-commercial entity based in the territory of the European Union that has no funds flowing at all from the US (think lemmy.world or feddit.de here) then it's probably quite a bit harder to do anything at all in terms of effective enforcement.
  
  I'm gonna petition my state to make a law that if someone is from Texas and tries to enforce Texan laws on my state, they're executed on the spot.
  Should be about as enforceable as this joke of a law.

Set up a redirect for all Texas IP addresses. Point to Fuck Texas.

lol it doesn’t
Texass is gonna have to play whack-a-mole and do it the hard way. And I’m pretty sure the more technically inclined members of the fediverse are going to have loads of fun fucking with whatever IT measures they try to mitigate this with, because they’re certainly not going to be drawing the best and brightest minds.
Put another way: weaponized non-neurotypicals are gonna have some fun fucking with a state government that doesnt like them, because the feeling is very much mutual.

Texas: "I'm gonna let you finish but I'm just going to keep regressing right now."

Texas is slowly turning into Afghanistan
- Not so slowly. 20 years ago it was a battleground state.

I'm fine with Texas disappearing from the internet. Literally every site with a comment section now has to comply or just block Texas. One of those seems more feasible.

Enjoying freedumb in Texas, I bet. One of the least-free states in the country.
- Its getting more dystopian by the week. I would say day, but a lot of brains don't move that fast here.

welp no more lemmy for texas i guess, lmao

Comply?
"Is there some way it just doesn't need to" = "Is there some scenario in which Texas laws don't apply worldwide?"
Yes. There is.
- To expand on this- In general you must comply with the laws of any jurisdiction where you have a business presence. This for example Meta is a USA company, but they have offices in the EU and they sell advertising in the EU from EU offices so they have to comply with EU laws for EU users. They can't just wave off and say 'we are a USA company, EU regs don't apply to us'.
  Lemmy is not a corporation. There is no business presence in Texas, unless an instance admin lives there or hosts the server there. So Lemmy, both as a whole and as individual instances, can simply give Texas the middle finger and say 'we aren't subject to your laws as we have no presence or business in your state. We are in the state of California (or whatever) and are subject to the laws of our home state. It is not our job to enforce Texas laws in California on servers hosted in Virginia.'
  Thus Texas trying to enforce their laws on a Cali company is like Hollywood studios sending DMCA notices to Finland.
  
  Thus Texas trying to enforce their laws on a Cali company is like Hollywood studios sending DMCA notices to Finland.
  My point exactly.

If I ran an instance and if I knew how to do it, I'd just prevent it from working in Texas like all the porn sites are doing.
- Did you changed the "O" in your username? When and how did you even do that?
  
  Yes. Yesterday. Display name can use emojis.

I expect the usage of VPNs in Texas to skyrocket exponentially in the next couple of months.
- Don't think so
  I'm petty sure everyone already started using VPNs when Pornhub was banned

Don't comply with tyrants.

Social media is probably a very poorly or very narrowly defined term. Either they called out Facebook, Reddit, Snapchat, etc by name or they gave some broad description of social media that could apply to everything from Facebook all the way down to somebody's Vbulletin forum and this will be unenforceable for the vast majority of websites. Compliance is likely voluntary for the little fish in social media. I imagine that they aren't even aware that Lemmy exists.

Good luck Texans. Nordman will heed your call

Pavel from Telegram is in trouble with Texas.

It's the internet - so unless you're under Texas' jurisdiction, then it's likely going to just simply be ignored. Lemmy doesn't have an interest in making money in Texas or anything, so it's not like they can go after bank accounts, or otherwise retaliate in any manner other than blocking Lemmy in Texas....so...nothing lost.

153 comments